


Gyre

by adi_rotynd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Winter Falcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:45:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adi_rotynd/pseuds/adi_rotynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Steve still meet running. Everything else—courtesy of Sam's time as a brainwashed super-assassin—is a little more complicated. (Basically WHAT IF <i>CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER</i> BUT WITH WINTER FALCON!SAM.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Beta:** The lovely, the incomparable, [rdm_ation](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rdm_ation). Any mistakes are emphatically my own.  
>  **Warnings:** This is a Winter Falcon story (as in Winter Soldier!Sam not Bucky/Sam), so basically everything that happens to Bucky Barnes plus that same stuff happening to Sam Wilson. None of it is particularly graphic, but none of it pleasant, either. Also: some racism.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Marvel owns every last thing.   
> [tumblr post](http://adirotynd.tumblr.com/post/118904843050/samstevexchange2015-title-gyre-a-gift-for)
> 
> (spoilery prompt in the end notes to the last chapter)
> 
> Enjoy, and comment should it strike your fancy~!

Sam counts things. (Trees. Sparrows. Heart beats. Strollers. Songbirds. Breaths.) It started as a nervous habit. That changed. He does it all the time now but it doesn’t mean he’s nervous all the time. It’s part of why he’s not nervous all the time. He’s just passed twelve trees (eleven deciduous one coniferous) and if he turns his head they’ll still be there. (He tested this constantly, in the months after SHIELD rescued him; he tests it less frequently now.) He’s taken nine breaths in the last minute so he’s fine. (This isn’t normal for a man running who hasn’t had his insides aggressively rearranged via experimental surgery but it’s normal for Sam.) 

He’s also gone 750 feet in the past minute, which makes being passed a novel experience. “On your left,” the guy says, and at least he sounds a little out of breath. Nothing that novel is annoying the first time it happens. Sam picks up his pace, dodges patches of ice, and puts it out of his mind. Then it happens again. 

The guy just ran over two miles in under eight minutes, and he’s still got plenty of breath to make smart remarks. So now Sam knows who he is. 

The third time Rogers passes him with a light, “On your left,” Sam thinks, _Fuck it,_ and passes him right back. 

Sam hasn’t been able to _race_ anyone since—before—and the rush is twelve breaths and 100 beats of his heart a minute, a full second without touching the ground, a headwind almost worth navigating. (Running doesn’t feel like flying but it can soothe the ache.) It’s the first time he’s gone this fast on the ground and not been alone, which is strange because it’s the most normal he’s felt since basic, like what they’re doing is habit. Other feet pounding, other arms swinging, other lungs pumping. If he doesn’t look over—

They’re approaching a jogger going the other way. Her baseball cap flares so red it smears. He stumbles and Rogers stops too, turns on the ball of one foot like a dancer. “That was incredible,” he says. He doesn’t have dimples but he looks like he should, with a smile that sweet. “Are you—who are you?” 

Sam puts his hands on his knees, which hides his face. Rogers bends closer, one hand out to help. 

The jogger passes. Sam straightens. “Sam Wilson,” he confesses, and shakes the hand Rogers has left between them like that’s what it’s there for and not Sam’s possible coronary. “Good to meet you.” It’s more true now than it would have been thirty minutes ago. Or, okay, a half minute ago, before he saw that smile up close and personal. 

“Steve Rogers.” 

“Kinda put that together.” It’s impossible to avoid smiling back. “I’d appreciate it if you kept that between us, what just happened. If I want to stay out I’ve got a cover to maintain.” 

“And you blew it on my account?” 

“Dude, I can't trust Captain America?” Sam swipes a hand across his mouth. “How about you let me buy you a coffee and explain.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam buys Steve a coffee that’s mostly caramel and a pretzel that’s mostly salt, and they nab a park bench that hardly smells like urine at all. “So I joined the army,” Sam says, eyes big. His breath plumes in the cold air. 

Steve laughs. It’s a good laugh, if short, and does fascinating things to his chest. “What unit you with?” 

It’s a question for a normal conversation. _Never mind the super-speed,_ it says. It undercuts a year and change of low-grade, vicarious resentment. Natasha should have introduced them earlier, spared herself some grief. “58th Pararescue,” he says, “but now I’m working down at the VA.” If Steve can act like things are normal, so can he. He says, “How you sleeping?” 

“What?” 

Sam chuckles. He hasn’t been inconspicuous enough about checking the guy out to be offended if he took that wrong. “Weird being back in a bed, right? After army-issue dirt mattresses and rock pillows?”

Steve leans back into the bench, shoulders rounded, expression unfailingly pleasant. “I feel like I’m gonna sink right through to the floor.” 

“Man, try it after babysitting in the 90s. Those kids’ TV shows had me convinced quicksand was the number one threat in my future.” He makes a face. “Nah, but the guys who were in Vietnam in the 60s get the same thing without the benefit of a _Goosebumps_ education. You ever mess up driving? I’m curious whether there’s a cop alive who’d ticket you.” 

“Well, I mostly use a motorcycle. And I didn’t drive much before I went overseas. I didn’t expect it to be the same here, I knew I’d have to learn.” 

“That was a hell of a ways from a no.” 

Steve laughs and ducks his head. “I got ticketed once. I paid it! But I think someone had a word with the force. Some of my bosses were pretty uptight about it. I got very politely bawled out three different times.” 

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Probably not by guys who’ve done most of their recent driving in combat zones.” 

“I guess I wouldn’t know.” Steve takes an impressive bite of his pretzel and chews mechanically. 

Sam watches the hopeful pigeons strut closer. (Seven, three gray and four speckled.) “They play their cards close, huh,” he says. “At SHIELD.” 

Steve swallows. “You’re—”

“No,” Sam says, laying the word down flat. “SHIELD did me a favor once. But they’re not my style. Like I said, I’m at the VA.” 

Steve nods and sticks his coffee in his face. It doesn’t cover the relief. Jesus, Natasha was right. The loneliness coils off this boy like smoke. 

“If you’re ever in the neighborhood,” Sam says, “and you want to make me look cool in front of the girl at the front desk, feel free.” 

Steve nods, or starts to, and his phone buzzes. Even the start of the nod didn’t look especially committal. Sam’s used to that, especially from WWII vets. Smaller, more wrinkled WWII vets, but still. Steve stands. “Duty calls.” 

“I bet. Say hey to Natasha for me if you see her.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam realized over a year ago that he didn’t care for Steve Rogers. He only realized how he felt because Natasha noticed first and stopped talking to Sam about Rogers. Four months into not-one-word-about-amazing-but-tough-to-reach -Steve, Sam figured out what she was doing and why she was doing it and that she was right. He didn’t want to hear about Rogers and his latest failure to let Natasha be his friend, especially not delivered with her chagrined here’s-how-I-messed-it-up-this-time twists. (It took him four months because he doesn’t see Natasha very often. No one sees Natasha very often, though.)

But. Now. 

“I told you.” Natasha throws a fry at him. He lets it bounce off his nose and onto his plate. If he dodges, she finds excuses to throw more until she lands a hit. “He’s a peach.” He laughs and she eats her next fry with mayo (she’s switching between four different condiments). “I stand by my phrasing. A _peach._ ” She looks like she’s tasting the word, which is just as well. Their newest dive for incognito meetings isn’t likely to have the real thing outside of a can. “You shouldn’t have said you know me.” 

“He would’ve found out.”

“Later. Once you got him dinner, not just coffee.” 

“He strike you as the type to take that news better _later_ , really?” 

“You can’t hook a fish if it won’t come to your side of the river.” 

Sam snorts into his hamburger. “You’ve never been fishing once in your life, huh?” 

Natasha’s eyes widen, the way they do when she identifies a skill at which someone could conceivably outdo her. “I’ve been fishing.” 

“All right. Look, he knows I’ve got… stuff going on… and that I’m personally familiar with SHIELD. He might as well know we’ve got a mutual acquaintance. It was a show of faith.” He swallows a bite of burger. It’s well-done, his only criterion, but the bun is stale. He discards it and keeps the meat. “We should go fishing next time, instead of….” He indicates the diner with his knife. The front windows are opaque with grease. There are five people inside, including him and Natasha and the cook and the waitress. Which is just as well, since there are only four booths. Sixteen seats, tops. 

Natasha scowls. “It’s tough to case an entire body of water ahead of time.” 

“I bet.” He cuts a piece of burger off and scoops up blackened chunk. It crunches when he bites into it. 

“Maybe. Don’t go buying me a rod.” 

He crosses his heart. “Not until you catch your first trout. I’ve got extras.” 

“I meant because I’m going to harpoon my fish.” She dangles a fry over the horseradish, then over the vinegar. “Does it bother you that I report on these meetings?” 

“Well, I figure, this way we get to see each other. You’re welcome for the paid vacation.” She chuckles and settles on the vinegar. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to file any reports on potential Steve sightings. You know, if Fury asks.” 

Natasha smiles. “If he asks, I’ll pass that along.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Steve shows up at the VA on a Tuesday afternoon. Shelby isn’t working the front desk, so it’s a waste on that front, but otherwise, Sam would call it a win. 

“Natasha swears up and down you’re really not with SHIELD,” Steve says. He has the grace to look bashful about his opening line. 

Sam laughs. “Only reason our interests lined up was they got me out. Sort of precluded a long-term working relationship.” There are three people left in the conference room behind him. They’re putting away chairs far enough away that he scans the hallway—six doors to the left, two to the right, twelve framed pictures on each wall, all the same as ever—and goes for it. “You’re pretty uptight about the place for an employee, not that I blame you. You thinking about getting out?” 

“No,” Steve says. He manages to look like he’s saying it normally despite the fact that it’s practically a whisper. He hesitates. “I don’t know. I don’t know what else I’d do. To be honest, I’m not always sure what I’m doing now, which is sort of the problem. Seems like you figured something out okay, though.” 

“Yeah, look at little old me. Zero shady dudes giving me orders and all I had to do was start a new career. I thought about Ultimate Fighting awhile, but I ended up sticking closer to home.” Steve’s laugh leaves him in a soft burst and Sam grins back. “Seriously, you could do whatever you want to do. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but having some extra abilities can open civilian doors too.” 

“It probably helped having a face like yours, though,” Steve says, practically breathless with nerves, which is what it takes for Sam to realize that was meant to be flirtation. 

“Sure,” he laughs. “I just send a picture around instead of a résumé.” He snaps his fingers. “Model! Think about it. You’ve got the looks, the showbiz experience, and it’d probably be slightly less high-pressure than saving the world.” He watches Steve’s face flood with relief that Sam’s flirting back. It’s a little concerning, actually. No way a guy that shocked not to be shot down had plans for what to do with a go-ahead. “Really, though. What makes you happy?” 

Steve smiles. It makes it worse when he says, “In general? I don’t know.” He rallies and adds, hopefully, “Right now it’d make me happy to have lunch with you.” 

Okay, so he did have a plan for a go-ahead. 

“If you want.” Steve leans back like he can physically reel the invitation in. 

“I could eat,” Sam says, and decides there’s no polite way to explain he was surprised because he’d figured he’d have to do the asking. “Man, you had to pick a Tuesday. Shelby is never going to believe this.” 

“Well, who knows.” He knocks an elbow against the wall. “Maybe I’ll be back.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

It’s not dinner, and Sam doesn’t consider lunch a romantic meal. But it’s a tiny Italian restaurant with mood lighting, and it’s a step beyond coffee. He’s seriously thinking of insisting on paying. 

Steve cuts his oysters precisely in half before he eats them. He’s six oysters in, twelve careful bites too small for his hands. It’s baffling and adorable and Sam is trying hard not to stare. “What did you do for your last vacation?” he asks, because this isn’t (entirely) about how appealing Steve is. He prepares himself to hear something crushingly sad, maybe about visiting a lot of graves. 

“I went to see the Grand Canyon,” Steve says instead. 

Sam laughs but manages not to snort steak back onto his plate. “Sorry, that’s just way more normal than I was expecting. I figured, best case scenario, maybe a tour of Asgard. Grand Canyon, though, that sounds fun.” 

“Why, where did you go?” 

“The beach.” 

“See?” Steve’s chin lifts, mock-defensive. “That’s normal.” 

“Fair, except I don’t have Thor on speed dial.” 

“The reception on Asgard isn’t so great.” Steve hunches forward and turns his fork in his spaghetti without catching any. “I used to think—a long time ago. That when the war was over I’d take a whole year and see the country, from a vantage point other than a stage. But even going to Arizona wasn’t such a good idea.” He smiles. “Turns out traveling is standing too still for me. Maybe I should’ve spent my daydreaming time coming up with a better job than making posters. At least SHIELD keeps me busy, doing something important.” He shakes his head and halves another oyster before looking up. “What about you?” 

“Standing still isn’t the problem for me. I start to move too fast, I might not be able to stop. I help as much as I can from here.” 

“But SHIELD keeps track of you,” he says. “What if you could get totally out, drop off the radar? What would you do?” 

“Go right back to the beach.” Sam laughs, so Steve does too, and again it’s nice but too short. “No, I mean it, though. I own a house a few states over.” If Steve’s bugged Sam’s already screwed, but he’s at least going to make them do their research. The house isn’t in his name. “It’d take a while to fix it up, especially counting the hours on WikiHow, since I don’t actually know how to fix up a house.” This time Steve’s laugh lasts longer. It spreads warm across Sam’s cheeks and chest. “After that, there’d be upkeep and all the fishing I’d have to do, as a man living by the ocean. Maybe take some night classes, finish my second degree. They’ve got VAs there.” There would be wind from gales to breezes, air striking warm up from the water, a lidless stretch of unobstructed sky. But the plan doesn’t come with wings. 

“That sounds good,” Steve says, smile still on his lips. “Isn’t there anyone you’d, you know, be… sharing it with?” 

That’s definitely a blush. This guy is unreal. “Not yet,” Sam says. “I’m wide open to the idea. Not really all that much of a loner when I don’t have to be.” 

Steve’s smile slips. “Yeah, me neither.” 

Sam pictures a string of empty motel rooms trailing west across the country and wonders who Steve thought he’d be traveling with, back in the day. Who would have made it possible to stand still. “Well, Thor aside, it’s tough for guys like us to find people with shared life experiences,” he says. “You want desert?” 

“Damn,” says Steve, but he’s looking at his phone. “I can’t today, I have to go in a second.” He looks up, eyes wide and drown-in-me blue. “Anyway, I don’t want it weighing me down when I lap you running tomorrow.” 

Sam chokes on his water. “That is both the smoothest and the jerkiest second date invitation I’ve ever gotten. Thank you for that experience.” 

“You’re welcome.” Steve grins, cocky but blushing past the collar of his shirt. “See you at 0600?” 

“At our spot,” Sam agrees. 

He can guess it’s non-Natasha SHIELD business dragging Steve away, so he shouldn’t, probably, leave the restaurant to see him off. He can’t stop himself. There’s a parched piece of envy to it, because he’s glad to be out but he hates being unable to help, and because he’s glad to be out but he remembers having wings. 

It’s cold still. The clouds are burning off but the air is dense against his skin. 

Steve gets picked up in a black van with tinted windows and all distinguishing characteristics filed off. Not SHIELD’s subtlest moment. The driver, some dude who upended his hair gel bottle on his head that morning, stares at Sam a second too long, but Sam can think of reasons. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam takes Steve on his Weaverton Cliffs route a few weeks later. It’s four miles long, round trip, if he counts the C&O Canal tow path. Four miles isn’t a workout these days, but it has other attractions. 

“Don’t twist an ankle, because I’m not carrying you back,” he warns Steve. 

Steve looks askance at the tow path, which shoots off straight and smooth through the trees bordering the Potomac, and says, “That’s rude, because I was planning on carrying you.” By the time he finishes the sentence he’s lit off, because Captain America is a dirty cheat. 

Sam was rebuilt specifically for speed. And for some other things, but speed was big. He also knows the way and has practice at the last mile and a half of rocks and roots and switchbacks on the way to the top. This is half the point of the run, for him. He knows guys at the VA who swear by yoga for this, getting your head to work with your body for a change, but a tricky run does him fine. It’s a balancing act, because he needs to get back inside his own skin every so often but can’t sink too deep. He could lose touch with the surface, get so lost that all he can think to do is follow orders. (SHIELD maybe could have taught him to use his abilities without losing track of what he’s using them for, despite AIM’s conditioning. Maybe. Or maybe they’d have taught him to use his abilities on SHIELD’s say-so instead.) 

None of that is now. The sun is clear and small in the winter sky. There’s mud slick where its light touches, and ice in the shadows. There’s no space for anything but where he puts his foot next, how far ahead he can reach with the next stride. 

Or there wasn’t before today. Having something else worth thinking about is a switch. He’s nearly as aware of Steve’s body as he is of his own; shorter, heavier steps drumming more rapidly than his, just behind or just ahead of him. Steve’s not built for this the way Sam is, and Sam decides privately that he’d hands-down win a long-distance race, but Steve, in some combination of joyful competition and grim determination, skids to a halt on the rocks at the top of the cliff at nearly the same second Sam does. Here’s the rest of the point. 

“Oh,” Steve says, and his eyes track left to right across the view the way they would a painting, tracing the skyline. “Wow.” 

“Yeah, it’s pretty great. You can see clear to Harpers Ferry.” He points west. “Personally, I can see a dude in Harpers Ferry wearing a Mountaineers baseball cap, but I’m gonna guess that’s just me.” 

“Wait, really?” Steve turns and his heel slides on a patch of ice on the bare rock. Sam catches his elbow despite the fact that he regained his balance in almost the same second he lost it. 

“Not really. I can’t tell if it’s the Mountaineers. Definitely university colors, though.” He rubs the bridge of his nose to hide a wince. “Those stand out. The blue, specifically. I’m good at blues, greens.” 

“And distances,” Steve notes. He finishes turning to face Sam more carefully, pressing his elbow into Sam’s palm. Sam doesn’t close his fingers. “Do you… were you always?” 

“Nah, I’ve had some work done.” The phrasing strikes him belatedly as an outright lie. He’s never had anything approaching a casual conversation about this with anyone but Natasha, and the easy gallows humor would be appropriate with Steve too if Steve knew. The moment is gone before he can think how to correct himself. After all, he’s talking to a guy who signed up for his improvements. 

“It’s tough for a while,” though, Steve says next. “I mean, I can hear out of both ears, which is great, but I had trouble figuring out where sounds were coming from for a year after the serum. I just wasn’t used to it. How long have you had—?” 

Sam raises his eyebrows when he figures it out. He counts most things, but not this. “Nine years now, or close to. Damn.” _You’d think the headaches would have stopped_ , he wants to add, but doesn’t. Steve probably doesn’t get headaches, is probably constitutionally incapable of them. And then, after the spike of envy at that, there’s a drop because Steve hasn’t even had nine years. 

“There wasn’t anything wrong with you before they did this, was there,” Steve says, a little wistful. “They weren’t fixing anything.” 

“I had 20/20 vision before the procedure, yeah.” He inhales. “I don’t remember what that was like.” 

“I think you might,” Steve says. “Deep down. You’re really… comfortable with yourself. Like it’s a habit. Can I kiss you?” 

Sam laughs. “You usually switch gears that fast?” 

“You’re the one who picked a run to a romantic, scenic overlook. I’m putting us back on the track you had us on to start with.” 

“You know what, yeah, why don’t you quit being smart and start kissing me.” 

Steve moves a step closer and hesitates, gaze on Sam’s lips. 

“Or,” Sam says. He tugs Steve’s head down and kisses him first. It’s a technical disaster, but it’s still the best damn kiss Sam’s ever had. He figures they can work on the technical part. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam acclimatizes fast, which is probably why he’s survived this long. He got used to taking orders in the Air Force, to the grind of boredom punctuated by terror and adrenaline. He got used to ignoring orders in the Falcon program, to being the only one who knew enough about his position and abilities to make a call. He got used to AIM, to watching his body rebuilt from somewhere numb behind his eyes, to acting on orders regardless of his position or abilities because it didn’t occur to him not to follow through with the plan. He got used to living without Riley, to looking and reaching for someone who wasn’t there. 

He got used to being a person again. He got used to Natasha. He gets used to Steve. It happens fast, but Sam’s used to that, too. He’s always fallen in love fast, with cheerful resignation. There’s a sharper edge to this than he’s felt since he was a teenager, more of a lurch and a drop. He tries not to read too much into it. It’s because he wasn’t sure he would feel this away again, he thinks. He’s not the guy he was last time he felt it. Mostly he doesn’t even remember that guy, can only imagine the person he is now doing the things he knows he did. This is an okay price to pay for not remembering who he was in AIM’s hands either. 

He’d like to tell Steve this, or some of it. There are parts Steve would get. But he hasn’t said a word. 

They’re a month and a half into a relationship Sam is pretty sure qualifies as ‘boyfriends’—half of his clothes are in Steve’s closet and half of Steve’s records are in Sam’s living room—when he tells him, and it happens because of an accident. Eyes still on the email from Shelby, he reaches to take the coffee mug Steve’s handing him. His fingers crush straight through it. “ _Shit_ ,” he says, and races to run cold water over his hand. “Goddamn, that stings.” 

“I bet.” Steve grabs a dishrag but stands over the spill a second, waiting for it to cool. “It’s not very practical, is it?” He gestures with the red-and-white checked rag at the sink. “The… thing with your hands.” 

Sam chuckles. “Natasha calls it my kung-fu grip. It’s funny if you grew up with those GI Joe dolls. I’ll YouTube you a commercial.” It occurs to him that Natasha didn’t grow up with any GI Joe dolls, that the reference is one she must have learned by rote for a role. 

Steve smiles but says, “I guess I don’t get why it happens, though. What’s the point?” 

Sam watches the water break over the surface of his skin and drum the sink before swirling down the drain. “I never thought about it.” He’s thinking about it now. “It’s a joke,” he says aloud. “Jesus. Falcon, get it? Raptors are the only ones that grip their prey.” 

“A joke?” 

Sam doesn’t look at him. He should choose a better time, but the only thing worse, in this second, than saying it would be swallowing it again. He leaves the water running over his hand because he doesn’t think he could say it without some other noise. “They weren’t real concerned with its applicability in everyday life. I guess they figured while they had me opened up anyway, to mess with my bones and lungs, why not have some fun with the tendons. In keeping with the theme.” Abruptly he can’t bear the sound of the tap. He twists the handle and silence sets in. 

“You signed up for the Falcon program.” Steve’s voice wavers once and levels off. “You told me it was aboveboard, just classified. What kind of _joke_ —”

“I never said the physical stuff was from the Falcon program. The people who did that, they ran with the concept.” 

Steve comes up behind him and puts a hand on the lip of the sink on either side of him. His knee collides with Sam’s leg from behind as he bows foreword. His forehead presses against the nape of Sam’s neck and Sam’s next inhale doesn’t hurt. “You didn’t want any of this?”

Sam huffs. “I could have done without it.” 

“Who did it to you?” He sounds terribly young. 

“AIM. Some dude they had working for them, he wasn’t a member. It’s taken care of, you know. Natasha got me out. I told SHIELD what I knew and got a pretty normal life to pick up with in exchange.” He braces his right hand on Steve’s. “And there’s more I should tell you, but for now I’m done. Okay?” 

Steve wraps his arms around Sam, sudden and tight, still here. “Okay.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The thing about Steve is, the more something bothers him the faster he barrels right into it. Sam can gauge how uncomfortable Steve’s feeling with the modern world by how much pop culture he consumes; the week he mainlined a hundred episodes of _Friends_ was a bad one. Sam ended up hiding the DVDs. 

He doesn’t doubt that Steve will leave it if Sam tells him to. He just doesn’t want to be responsible for the tension headaches even a super-soldier has to get from clenching his jaw that much. And even if he doesn’t get the brainwashing part, Steve can meet him halfway on a lot of it; can come closer to understanding than anyone but Natasha. It’s just, damn, Sam doesn’t want to have this conversation. 

Steve makes it around thirty-five hours before Sam breaks for him. 

“Okay, the cobbler is safe for consumption,” he says. “I assume you’re worried it might try to eat its way out of your stomach, but I’m telling you, it’s dead. You killed it.” 

Steve smiles and sighs and drops his fork. “Guess I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.” 

“Yeah, me neither.” He goes to the fridge for a beer. The taste is comforting, even if the alcohol content doesn’t do much for him. “So that other stuff I have to tell you.” He leans into the corner of the counter. Steve turns to face him and braces himself, which answers the question of whether he could get any tenser. “I wasn’t kidding about the theme. I’ve got hollow bones with air sacs hooked up to my lungs for extra breathing room. Crazy eyesight. Something up with my cardiovascular system; I’ve got great circulation. I can’t taste for shit but I make a great barometer and compass. There’s the super-strength. I don’t know how they did that one.” 

“Well.” Steve nods. “That explains a lot.” 

“How I’m so light despite being one of the most built guys you’ve ever seen aside from Thor?” 

“I meant the taste thing. Explains why you drink your coffee black on purpose. And you’ve got to lay off on the Thor stuff or I’m gonna get jealous.” Steve smiles. He manages to do it without looking any less heartbroken. It might actually make him look more heartbroken. Sam resolves not to try joking to lighten the mood next time. “Why did—why do that to you?” 

“Yeah, that’s actually the part we need to discuss.” He’s forgotten his beer. He takes a swig. 

Steve’s fingers play along the edge of his dessert plate. He got the unchipped, uncracked one, Sam notes. He needs to buy more plates. All the others have something wrong with them. “Here we are.” 

“It was a lot of work and it wasn’t cheap.” Sam gestures to himself. “There were some diminished returns, too, they got—they got a couple of us from the Falcon program but I was the only one who made it all the way through. Everybody else died on the table. Anyway. AIM doesn’t shell out like that for fun. They wanted me to put my improved skillset to good use.” 

“And you did,” Steve says. “Jesus, Sam. Of course you did.” 

He nods. He says, “I don’t remember it all that well. They messed with my head a lot. Not as much as they wanted to, the scientist was always moaning about how much more he could accomplish with… some doctor. But the doctor was dead. Guess they didn’t really need him. I did what they told me. Didn’t even get away on my own. The wings were too flashy, SHIELD caught on and sent Natasha to kill me. She’s got an eye for brainwashing victims, turns out.” 

Steve licks his lips. He’s pale. “Good thing.” 

“Yeah.” He leans forward and holds out the bottle. Steve takes it and gulps half of it down at once. “When I got so I could, you know, hold a conversation, Fury had a laundry list of things they figured I did. Once I see the op I can usually confirm or deny, add information if I was involved. He’s still got the list if you want to look.” 

“No,” says Steve, like it’s that simple. He holds his hand out for Sam’s. “I’ll look if you want me to, if you’re worried I’d change my mind. But no.” 

“Hey, you’re talking to the guy who tried to tell you to move your TV to the other side of the room. I’m not worried you’ll change your mind about anything.” He lets Steve pull him over and rest his head against Sam’s ribs. The tight spiral of irrational fear loosens in his chest. No matter what Captain America stands for, Steve is a soldier, and Sam hasn’t met a soldier yet who isn’t choked at night by something they did, something shameful. But for Sam there are so many.

“We got hold of an issue of _Stars and Stripes_ once,” Steve says. “It talked about Gelderland and we were rolling it up for kindling before Gabe said that was us, we’d been in Gelderland. We’d read the story and not even realized it was about the guys we came into the Netherlands with, before we broke off. We were wet and hungry, there was a fever going around. Someone said we were never in Gelderland, we were in Kootwijk—the village we got ambushed in.” He shakes his head, hair mussed against Sam’s shirt. “I just mean I know how small the world gets. You’ve got your next target and that’s it. I know.” 

Sam nods, which Steve can’t see. He cups the back of Steve’s neck. He’s careful closing his fingers. “All right.” 

Steve brings the hand in his to his lips and holds it there, pressing fiercely, too long for a kiss. “I don’t care. As long as you’re safe now.” 

“Safe as houses,” Sam says. He doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as tempting fate. He doesn’t believe fate cares one way or the other. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

During the day Sam doesn’t remember what it felt like to be normal. He’s used to being—this, instead—which is good except that it happened so completely he can only imagine being this before, too. (He could remember, he thinks, if he tried harder, but he’s built a life entirely on the surface, a life in which he’s happy and safe, so he’s not going to go diving.) He remembers how to act normal, how he used to act. He acted that way until it came naturally again. 

During the day Sam doesn’t remember what it felt like to be a weapon. He’s used to being free. 

Sometimes at night he remembers them both, Riley and the scientist. It makes nighttime difficult. Steve twitches in his sleep and startles awake at every little noise too, though. Their nighttime is difficult and they spend it together, more or less. 

Sam’s alone when he sleeps, or at least Steve’s not there. That’s better, he thinks, than Steve being in these dreams. In dreams the time AIM had him pools outward like ink in water and stains the rest of his life. Sam fires and the target has his sister’s face. Sam twists in midair and snaps Riley’s neck. Sam reaches across the table at a crappy diner and grabs Natasha’s throat. 

It’s weird because hurting people he loved hadn’t bothered him at the time, and at night he remembers that. With AIM he would have killed Riley for a chance to be near him again. What had bothered him was being alone. 

_“It’s a question of focus,”_ the scientist had droned over the link, on and on, as if he didn’t have a throat to tire. _“Of narrowing your focus until you can be optimally effective, Staff Sergeant Wilson, and of our ability to control the point of your focus. What a pity that Hydra failed to preserve the good doctor; we could have used his insights so much more effectively this time. I hoped I might build you entirely without resorting to the chair. It is inelegant. Well, never mind. Any trial can be borne in good company. It hurts at first, but soon you will not be alone. I told them for decades that the Winter Soldier works best as part of a pair. One man—the right man—can be the equal of an army, they said. But none of them remember what the Soldier was capable of when he fought with a friend, rather than for a cause. Besides, is not a hydra a creature given to multiplication?”_

The words clogged the air until Sam would have screamed at him to shut up if he could. If he hadn’t hurt so much, if he hadn’t been more afraid of silence. Sam spent years in the lab and long after he forgot to wish to get out he wished the scientist were really there. His face flickered on screens that cut in and out. The sound system dipped under the weight of his voice. He was frequently impatient but never angry. Often he was pleased. Sam thought if he were really there the scientist might, when he was pleased, touch Sam. Maybe a hand on his forehead. He wished for that, especially when the scientist remembered he wasn’t supposed to use Sam’s title and called him ‘dear boy’ instead. 

Steve understands a lot. He wouldn’t understand this even if Sam could tell him. 

When Riley and Sam got out of basic in San Antonio they drove to Austin to celebrate. They stopped at a gas station where the attendant stared and followed Sam around the store. Sam doesn’t recall how the conversation started, but it culminated in the attendant calling Sam ‘boy.’ Riley slugged him. Sam had been furious—with the attendant, with Riley, with himself. 

At night, when he wakes up sudden and sweating, he remembers how that felt. 

He can’t imagine Riley understanding any more than Steve would, but that’s just a failure of imagination. If Riley had survived, he wouldn’t have had any choice but to understand.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve fails to leave. Actually, ‘fails to leave’ doesn’t cover it. He launches another phase of his campaign to be the most surprising man Sam knows. A few months after the revelation that Sam’s spent time as a surgically enhanced weapon for the wrong side, Steve basically asks him to elope. 

“I was thinking,” says Steve, and flattens Sam to the mat. Which is another thing that apparently follows on an ex-brainwashed-assassin confession, in Steve’s mind: sparring with the ex-brainwashed assassin. 

“Not too hard, I hope.” Sam hooks his arms to Steve’s side and swings him off before rolling back and away, onto his feet. Steve hits the ground and there’s an opening, an advantage Sam should press. He waits. “Humor me and pretend this is enough of a challenge that you’re not simultaneously solving world hunger.” 

“That was ten minutes ago,” Steve says as he drops and sweeps his leg at Sam’s ankles. It works, because Sam has never seen anyone do that out of nowhere before, and he hits the ground with a laugh. Steve continues, “I was thinking about when I woke up, after the ice.” He somersaults onto Sam and pins his hands to his sides with his knees. “Hey, I win.” 

“Bullshit,” Sam says automatically, but can’t actually free his hands or buck Steve off. “Rogers, you are a freaky dude.” 

“You’re not trying very hard.” 

“I warned you I wouldn’t. I’m not going to risk it, man. I’m a little more Hulk than Captain America.” He wishes he’d come up with the analogy earlier. Or maybe he doesn’t, because it’s a thrill to know he can do this. ( _“I get that you’re used to doing super-strength stuff in awful situations, I do,”_ Steve had said, _“but what about your speed? You can use that without slipping, right? So theoretically, if you wanted to, and you felt safe, would the other stuff be all that different?”_ He was right. Sam’s not going to push it, but he was right.) 

“Your loss.” Steve grins and lets up. 

“So the defrosting thing,” Sam prompts. He rotates his wrists. 

Steve raises his eyebrows and drops back to sit cross-legged next to Sam. “That. I woke up and SHIELD had me in this… studio setup. Tried to convince me it was still 1945—or 1941, they weren’t choosy. They meant well. I get why they did it. But I thought it was a mistake and they’d learned, and that was it. That they wouldn’t lie to me again. Then something happened a few weeks later on the Helicarrier, and I thought that time they learned and they wouldn’t do it again. But they’re still… they’re not telling me everything. I wanted to be part of what Peggy built, and I want to help people, and I want to know what I’m doing. I don’t think I can do all three of those things.” 

Sam stares. “You serious?” 

“I don’t know about Ultimate Fighting or modeling, but I could go for a place on the beach. I’d help you fix it up. I’m not bad at carpentry, just don’t ask me to fix the plumbing.” His brows knit and he nods at Sam’s hands. “Did I hurt you?”

“Huh?” Sam glances down. He’s bending his fingers back, one after another. “Oh. Nah, that’s all me. Comfort wasn’t the prime concern with my modifications. Hold up, did you just propose that you retire _and_ we move in together?” 

“Yes?” Steve takes his hand and presses down and up between tendons. “If you want?” 

“That sounds pretty damn perfect.” Sam makes an effort to keep his grin from getting too soppy. He needs his self-respect. “I’m not entertaining you all day when you realize you’ve retired at the tender age of ninety-six.”

Steve knocks his shoulder. “I’ll find stuff to do. Probably fix the whole house myself while you’re still on WikiHow.” 

“You wouldn’t be moving very fast, you know that?” 

“Well. I’ll run around and circle back home at the end of the day.” Steve leans in but stops short of kissing Sam. “Still sound doable?” 

“I said ‘pretty damn perfect,’ don’t second-guess my evaluation.” 

“My mistake.” Now he kisses Sam, and when they break apart he says, “I do have an op tomorrow though. I’ll break it to Fury when I get back from defeating something the briefing claims is bad.” 

Sam groans and definitely doesn’t mention any clichés about ‘one last job.’ Steve is Captain America, he’ll be fine. “Good luck with that.” 

“You’re meeting Natasha, right?” Steve grins. “Have her text me tips on handling Fury.” 

“You know that’ll give the game away when he intercepts your texts.”

“Then I won’t have to tell him.” Steve lets Sam’s right hand go and reaches for his left. 

“No, he’d still make you tell him.” Sam rubs his fingertips together, the whorls of his prints catching against one another. He traces a line down Steve’s arm, over the slippery weave of his sleeve and the fine hairs on his bicep to the tender skin inside his elbow. He’d thought he was going numb under Steve’s massage, but he can feel fine. His hand just doesn’t hurt. “When I was nine my dad told me I could quit piano lessons if I told the teacher myself. I took piano until I was thirteen.” 

Steve laughs. It’s still a pretty short-lived phenomenon, but he throws his head back and leans into it in a way he didn’t before. “Well, like you said, I’m ninety-six, so that gives me an edge. It’s not going to take me four years, I promise.” 

Sam shakes his head. “That I believe.” Steve looks lighter than Sam’s seen him yet. Sam says, “Yeah, it’s a plan.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam’s halfway to his car when his phone chirps. _Change of plans_ , Natasha’s text says, and by the time he’s read all three words there are tires squealing at the end of his driveway. 

It’s the nondescript black van that picked Steve up from lunch, ages ago. The guy who’d been driving at the time jumps out of the back, not visibly armed but all in SHIELD-approved tactical gear. Steve doesn’t talk a lot about what he does with SHIELD, but from what he has said, Sam’s gathered this has to be Rumlow. Steve seems to like him. Sam, vicariously, doesn’t, but he’d felt the same way about Steve before he met him and look how that turned out. If he can’t withhold judgment, he tries to at least not take it too seriously. Until someone who looks like he’s on his way to a combat zone pulls up uninvited in Sam’s sunny springtime neighborhood.

“Widow told you?” Rumlow says, pointing to Sam’s phone but scanning the street. 

“Not really,” Sam says, rocking his weight back. “What’s going on?” 

“We’re in a hell of a hurry is what’s going on.” He jabs his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s move.”

“No, seriously.” Sam widens his stance. “What’s going on.” 

Rumlow cracks a smile. “Wilson, I’m not all that close to Rogers, but if today takes an upswing from _unremitting shitfest_ , he’ll still be my boss tomorrow. As a personal favor, could you not make me the asshole who got his CO’s boyfriend killed?” 

Sam’s throat closes. He forces out, “Steve’s in trouble?” 

“Rogers is in trouble, you’re in trouble, I’m in trouble.” He grabs Sam’s arm and pulls him toward the van. If SHIELD decided to take him in for study, Sam thinks, this isn't how they’d do it. He climbs in. 

Rumlow slams the door behind them and knocks the panel between them and the driver. They start to move, the smell of diesel souring the air. “Welcome to protective custody,” he says. There are a few other guys in the van. These ones are visibly armed. One of them has even more gel in his hair than Rumlow, which is frankly impressive. “Threats have been made, etcetera. We’re dropping you at a safehouse and going on to provide backup.” 

“Against what? Is Steve hurt?” 

His jaw ticks. “He’ll be fine.” 

“I’ve got to help.” The words punch their way up from Sam’s gut. 

“Ah, man, don’t start that—”

“I _can_ help. Ask Natasha—ask the Black Widow.” 

“You’re not SHIELD. Whatever else you got going on, my orders are to get you to safety.” 

Sam slides onto his knees and checks that the bench he’d been on is bolted to the floor of the van. He fits his fingers under the seat and rips the whole thing up in a screech of protesting metal. “I can help,” he repeats. The air he’s breathing doesn’t fill his lungs. 

“Shit,” says Rumlow, heavy as lead. “I guess maybe you can.” And then he says—

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

(Sam remembers what it feels like to drown but only very distantly, now. It’s been a long time and it’s not important. Rumlow hands him a pistol and it’s easier than breathing’s been in years to check the hammer, the release. The skin of his back twinges and he ignores it, ignores the jerk of his trapezius and the ache deep in his shoulder blades. He doesn’t know the plan.) Rumlow hands him a pistol. Sam asks for the plan of attack. 

Rumlow says—something—the same thing he said before. There’s a roaring in Sam’s ears like the roaring in the back of his brain after SHIELD cut the wings off him and there was no real input anymore, his brain making background noise to keep itself occupied. He thinks he heard Rumlow speak but seconds later he doesn’t remember what he said. This is all right. It’s not important. 

( _“This is kind of a long shot,”_ Natasha said to him once, _“but do you know any of your own trigger words? I remember how sloppy they can get about talking in front of people like us.”_ Sam remembers this and dismisses it. Steve is hurt. Steve is important. Sam still doesn’t know the plan.) He asks again for the plan of attack. 

Rumlow rolls his eyes like this is something he’s tired of dealing with. “They couldn’t load them with a bigger conversational repertoire?” he says to one of the other guys, and then, “There’s a tunnel from an abandoned army base in New Jersey. We sneak in, we grab Cap, everything’s fine.” He keeps talking but Sam’s hearing fuzzes over again. It doesn’t matter. Rumlow sketches their attack in the air with a finger and Sam doesn’t need to hear a word. The pieces of the plan slot into place following a fingertip with gun oil under the nail. 

Information filters through once in a while. (Steve’s injured. Radio silence. He’s not sure how Rumlow knows Steve’s injured, then. He almost asks but Rumlow says—something—and he doesn’t.) Steve’s injured. Nothing else matters. Nothing else changes the plan. If Steve dies the plan doesn’t matter. 

One soldier more or less doesn’t change the plan either, so long as it’s not him. He’s the one the enemy can’t prepare for. So it doesn’t bother him when they’re joined in the elevator behind the bookshelf by a man with a metal arm and a mask. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The ground comes up under Sam’s feet so hard his knees buckle. This is a metaphor. He’s capable of metaphors. 

What actually happens is that the door slams behind him, his head clears, and he’s in a room buzzing with ancient florescent lights and humming with ancient computers. It’s a huge room but it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s an ending. 

He’s not alone. The man with the metal arm is shut in here with him. Sam elects to find this the opposite of comforting. “What the hell,” says Sam, backing up and aiming his pistol. The pistol Rumlow gave him. Not something he should pull the trigger on, then. He keeps aiming, because what else is he going to do, but stops backing up, because he’s only getting farther into the room. The air is cold near the door but as he gets closer to the processors the heat they give off starts to prickle at his skin like breath. They’re massive. They could be hiding—“So you want to at least tell me the part about Steve being hurt was a lie?” 

The man looks at the gun pointed at his head, unalarmed. Un…anything. His eyes are glazed. If Sam saw him on the street he’d assume the guy was high. He reaches up to unhook the mask, and lets it hit the floor when it comes undone. Sam half-expects scars, but he looks like a standard-issue white dude, even a little familiar. His jaw works a second before he says, “I don’t know who that is.” 

“All right.” Sam’s shoulder brushes a processor. It’s hot through his shirt, like something living. “How about telling me what I’m doing here?” 

“Not my job.” The man sways forward like he means to take a step, and frowns when he doesn’t make any progress. 

“It is someone’s job, though,” Sam extrapolates. 

The man sways again. This time he moves, past Sam and up to the bank of monitors dwarfed by the sea of processors. Sam can hear his arm working when he passes, an echo of the computers’ hum. He bends over a keyboard and types something in, then stops and looks Sam in the eye for the first time. “I know it hurts at first,” he says. “But—” He stops. He hits another key and jerks back. Sam stiffens and crouches but nothing happens—no new smells or the hiss of gas, which, given the mask, was among his concerns. The light doesn’t change. No one emerges from behind the processors. 

But he can’t see the monitor, which is where the man with the metal arm is staring. His eyes are glassy and green with reflected light. Sam’s not sure the room isn’t moving. 

The sound system crackles. A camera rotates, but not far enough to catch Sam. A reedy voice says something in another language and the man holds his left hand out in Sam’s direction. It whines and jerks into silence. “He wants to see you,” he says. 

Sam couldn’t go to him if he tried. Sweat’s broken out at his temples and chest and most of his attention is on not throwing up. He’s dropped the P226 and he’s not sure when that happened, he’s not even sure he checked the lever, he must have because otherwise he wouldn’t have aimed at—

“Staff Sergeant Wilson,” says the voice, accented but in English this time. “What a pleasure to have you back.” 

Sam’s knees give way. This is not a metaphor. The grit on the floor bites his palms and he can feel it in his eyes. Something is booming, somewhere. He thinks of battering rams at castle gates on the twelve-inch screen in the living room when he was eight years old, the swoops the sound took and the lines of static as the VHS wore out. 

There are hands on his wrists. The flesh one is cool and the metal one is hot enough to hurt. “He wants to see you,” the man repeats, but he’s kneeling in front of Sam and doesn’t move to get either of them up. 

“We need to get out,” Sam says. Means to say. He looks up. The man smiles and looks heartbroken. Sam is reminded, perversely, of Steve. 

“Sam,” says Steve, which can’t be right, because Steve isn’t here, but then he says, “Bucky?” 

The man’s right hand is still on Sam’s wrist and Sam feels it go motionless. The other hand is gone because it’s off pointing a gun at Steve. Sam (on the off-chance that he’s not hallucinating) punches the guy. 

He responds by adjusting his grip on Sam’s left wrist and snapping the bone. 

The sound system crackles. “Soldier,” says the voice, peeved. “Report.” 

“Sorry about this,” says Natasha, “it’s going to hurt,” and something explodes. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

There’s blood trickling out of Sam’s ear the next time his body bothers to register sensation. It’s so irritating, it takes him a second to move on and acknowledge the blinding pain. What he thought were sounds are vibrations from the floor of a van. He’s been bundled into the backseat alongside Natasha, both of them buckled in place. The van hums around him but he can’t hear it; there’s no sound but his brain groping around to make up for the lack. 

Steve is driving. Steve’s alive, he’s not hurt, and he’s driving. 

Sam says his name and does hear it, muffled, far away even though it’s in his own mouth. Natasha shifts against him and jerks upright a second later. Steve looks at them in the rearview mirror and Sam thinks of the word _shellshocked._

Natasha’s voice reaches him in a low rush of consonants, like there’s something over her mouth—

He remembers what happened and makes the mistake of checking his wrist. It’s bent back, bone barely covered by skin. The pain pulses closer now that he’s looking.

“—call him,” Steve says, still too far away, but Sam can make out the words. 

“Thank you,” says Natasha, and lapses back against Sam’s shoulder as she digs out her phone and dials. “He didn’t know, Steve. Whoever’s in on this, Nick isn’t.” 

“Who’re we calling?” He should set his wrist. His bones are… complicated, and he heals fast. If it sets the way it is now, he’s fucked. “No, you know what, before we get to that. What the hell _happened_?” 

“I have trackers in most of your shoes,” Natasha says smoothly. “You didn’t show up for our date and I got worried.” She puts the phone on speaker as Fury says, “—Romanoff, this had better be good.” 

“I think you’ll be impressed.” She sits up straight and rolls her shoulders. One of them pops into place. “Rogers and I just took out half of STRIKE because they kidnapped Sam Wilson and tried to revert him to his programmed state.” 

The phone sits silent for a second. “Walk me through this,” Fury says. Natasha shrugs, winces when her shoulder creaks, and raises her eyebrows at Sam. 

“You texted me—” The memories topple into place with thuds of pain through his skull and down his spine. “Rumlow said Steve was hurt. We were going to help.” 

“I didn’t text you.” Her gaze flutters between them. 

“No, Natasha, I know. I just… got a text. I wasn’t thinking straight. They have… Steve, SHIELD might have a little bit of an AIM infestation. They have the guy who did this to me. Round face, glasses, Swiss accent, loves the sound of his own voice.” 

Steve jerks the wheel and slams on the brakes. He sits at the wheel, fingers white. “Zola,” he says. 

Sam’s stomach lurches. “Yeah.” 

“Arnim Zola,” says Fury, “is very dead.” 

“We should keep moving,” Natasha says. “Steve, I’ll drive. You need to set Sam’s wrist.” 

Steve nods, breath coming short. He’s pale and when he climbs in back next to Sam, when he grabs Sam’s knee and holds on, Sam can feel him shaking. “Zola’s supposed to be dead,” he says, “but so is Bucky, and he’s not. That was him with Sam.” 

“With the metal arm?” Natasha looks over her shoulder. “Sam’s wrist, Steve. And I hate to throw this out there, but wasn’t Zola Hydra? What about Operation Paperclip?” 

“Zola did some useful work for us under Operation Paperclip,” Fury snaps, “before he died. There was an open-casket service.” 

“It’s a day of surprises,” Natasha says lightly. “You caught the part about the metal arm, right?” 

Steve touches Sam’s cheek. “Ready?” He takes Sam’s wrist in both hands, fingers skimming-light. Sam nods. 

“I’m dealing with one bogeyman at a time, Romanoff. Now James Barnes is the Winter Soldier?” 

Steve chooses now to snap Sam’s wrist back into place, which is just as well, because the words _Winter Soldier_ —

_“—the Wings of Hydra when we are finished with these fools and their regrettably necessary funding, my dear boy. Finally a successful replication of the Winter Soldier process.”_

—but it’s hard to be _elsewhere_ when a bone is grinding back into place against its other half. “Shit,” Sam grits out. “I’ve got more bad news.” 

“You remember something?” Natasha takes a corner with little regard for the rules of the road. 

“I take back what I said about the AIM infestation.” Sam lays his new-set wrist atop Steve’s thigh and Steve holds it steady. He’s not trembling now. “The—Zola talked about Hydra. The Winter Soldier. AIM was footing the bill, but I think you have a Hydra infestation.” 

Finally, Fury says, “Then we’d better dig it out.”

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam can’t summon any surprise that SHIELD owns bunkers that are secret from 99% of SHIELD, but he does have to wonder how it’s so well-equipped. He’d have thought it’d leave a trail, buying and transporting this much shit. At least the décor is bare rock and concrete. It’s nice to have the visual match the sense of persecution. The dank concrete, the smell of growing things worming their way through the cracks on every drop of moisture, also detract from the medical-center atmosphere. He’s got a cast on his wrist and the upper advisable limit of aspirin in his bloodstream, but there’s no illusion that he’s home safe. 

“So,” he says. Steve settles next to him on the edge of the cot, his warm bulk close enough that Sam’s pulled against him by the dip in the unforgiving mattress. He leans in. Steve smells singed and his shirt is tacky with sweat, but Sam matches him on both counts. “Bucky Barnes, huh.” 

“That was him.” Steve clasps his hands together over his knees. 

“I believe you, man.”

“He looked right at me, and it was like he didn’t even know me.” 

“Well, you’d shown up five seconds later, I might not have known you either, so I believe that too.” 

“You think they did to him… the same stuff they did to you?”

Sam shakes his head like he can rearrange its contents that way. “Half the problem with me giving SHIELD information when I got back was they had to give me something first. For every single piece of info. They didn’t poke the memory with a stick, it’d sit so still I didn’t even know it was there. No one thought to try Zola or Hydra. Or Winter Soldier. Dead man, finished organization, fabled assassin.”

“Lot of us dead, finished, or fabled guys running around these days. It’s getting so I don’t feel special at all.” Steve’s smile collapses before it makes it all the way across his mouth. “Sam, he didn’t—was Bucky there when they had you?” 

“No. No, he didn’t hurt me. I never saw him. Never saw Zola in person, even. He did all the directing remotely, ordered the techs around from a screen. But when there was no one there to do what he told them, dude, the man didn’t _sleep._ Just kept talking over the link. That was when the Winter Soldier would come up. Replication of the process wasn’t going so hot, but AIM wanted more and was willing to shell out, so… let them pick up the check until it worked, you know? He didn’t talk about this part when they could hear, but he was excited for the two of us to work together, once I was finished. We were going to be the dream team. Two Winter Soldiers for the price of one, as far as Hydra was concerned.” 

“How—” Steve stops. “Did Riley…?” 

He doesn’t finish and Sam’s grateful. Riley spent hours jerking and screaming in the restraints on the table next to Sam’s and hours more in the same place after he died. Sam drifted off to the drone of Zola’s voice and when he woke Riley was still staring at the ceiling with flies in his eyes and mouth. Sam hadn’t recognized him. He remembers looking over and seeing a stranger. 

“Riley wasn’t a successful replication of the process,” Sam says. “None of my guys were. Just me. Guess I lucked out.” 

“Sam.” 

The light overhead fizzes. Sam pictures looking over to the next table and seeing the man with the metal arm, jaw slack, monitors flatlined and wailing unheeded. The throb in his wrist spikes. Riley sits up on the table beyond James Barnes and smiles. _“That’s fair,”_ he says. 

There are three cots in this room. There are no tables. There are four chairs. There’s only one exit but it’s large. Barnes isn’t here because Natasha exploded a bunker at him. Riley isn’t here because he’s dead. 

“Rumlow saw you because of me,” Steve says. He reaches across Sam and takes his good hand. “He saved my life a couple times. I would have told you to stay in the restaurant if I didn’t think I could trust him. He asked your name and I told him. Just your first name. But they got their hands on you because you were with me.” 

Sam huffs, something short of a sigh. “And the time before this, they got their hands on me because I was with the US Army.” 

“You’re not dating the US Army, don’t be an ass.” 

“I don’t know, sometimes when you hop out of bed and go directly to whistling in the shower at 0500 it kind of feels like I’m dating the US Army.” Sam brings his elbow back into Steve’s side, which is a mistake in that it’s the left elbow and agonizing, but the pressure in his chest bursts and he doesn’t see Riley anymore. “Not your fault,” he says. He can still taste it, coating the back of his tongue, the pulpy rot of envy. Barnes should have died in 1945. He swallows this back but it floods his mouth again, and it might be out of spite for himself that he says, “I can get him back.” 

Steve’s face clouds over, then clears to something cold. “I can’t ask that of you, Sam. You got out this time.” 

“Hey, Captain America needs my help. No better reason to go back in.” He fits his fingers through Steve’s. “We need someone inside if we want to be sure how deep this goes, and trust me, these guys aren’t real careful what they say around a brainwashed dude.”

“Strategically, sure, but I can’t—I wasn’t doing so well, this—”

“Century? Yeah, a couple of us noticed.” 

“Great. Thanks. My point is, meeting you changed a lot. You’re not an acceptable loss. For me.” 

“For me either.” Sam leans into Steve’s nudge. “But, man, the country’s top intelligence agency is growing Nazi domestic terrorists in the basement like a shady landlord with a weed farm. I think we’re at a place where we’re all acceptable risks, am I right?” 

Steve sighs, monumental shoulders tightening and staying that way, like he never gets around to exhaling. He turns sideways, one knee on the cot, to look Sam in the eye. “Can you? Because, and I quote, you’re more Hulk than Captain America. Except you’re not indestructible, and there’s a difference between a risk and suicide mission.” 

“When I told you that, I thought I couldn’t. It’s been good for me, hanging out with you. Really put me in touch with myself. I wouldn’t have sparred with anybody this time last year. Now I can.” 

Steve hesitates. Sam recognizes a man on a high wire. At least Steve won’t have to balance long; one direction or the other, he’ll get pushed. 

Before he can answer, Natasha walks in with Fury on her heels. Steve shoots to his feet. “What the hell is Operation Paperclip?” 

Fury’s eyebrows arch. “Sounds to me like you worked it out just fine. Operation Paperclip was SHIELD doing what it had to in order to stay a step ahead.” 

“A step ahead of what? Hydra? Which parts of it were you ahead of, exactly? Not the guys on your payroll.” He subsides when Fury’s face creases, but only momentarily. “Bucky died taking Zola prisoner,” he says, softer now. “And SHIELD gave Zola a place to stay until he could pick up on Sam right where he left off 65 years ago. That’s a lot for an intelligence agency to miss, Director.” 

“It is.” Fury trades a look with Natasha. “Which is why we’re taking this straight to the top.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Alexander Pierce’s house looks deserted, which is fine by Sam. From the size and ostentation of the place, they could as easily have pulled up to find a gardener tending the hydrangeas in the mist and a maid dusting the mantel, even at gray o’clock in the morning. The way things are going, Sam would almost have expected at least one of them to whip out a pistol and a ‘hail Hydra.’

That doesn’t happen. The four of them step through the front door and Sam has time to wonder if this is what mahogany smells like, and to register that Secretary Pierce isn’t home—the house is all barely-moving dust motes and muffled echoes, is indefinably _empty_ —before the gunfire starts. 

He was wrong. The house isn’t empty. It isn’t a maid or gardener, at least. They merit the Winter Soldier, 1.0, mask-free and all but bristling with firearms. 

“ _Bucky_ —” Steve jumps forward, shield arcing on an intercept course with most of the bullets, and plunges on to bring the fight within arm’s reach. ‘Most of the bullets’ doesn’t cover the one that slams into Fury’s shoulder as he’s jamming the door behind them, and doesn’t cover the spray that comes from outside a split second later. So Sam maybe discounted the gardener too early. 

Fury shouts and Sam hurls the both of them to the ground. Natasha follows and shoves them over, away from the door. Sam helps her haul Fury to the nearest defensible vantage point, behind a bulwark of furniture. They’re being fired on through a goddamn wall of windows, but from here they can fire back. Sam rolls onto his stomach and gets down to doing just that. It’s the fucking STRIKE team again and they’ve got better cover than he does, using the van. They’ve also got more backup. His hip is wet and warm with Fury’s blood and Natasha’s breath comes too fast as she tries to stanch Fury’s wound with one hand and fire with the other. Chunks of glass hail down. The couch splinters. From behind him he can hear Steve and the Soldier, thuds and groans and Steve talking every time he has breath to do it. Fury’s eyes roll back and Natasha says something in Russian while firing so wild she hits a wall. 

“Take care of him,” Sam grits out. The STRIKE team has advantages. So does he. 

He stands and launches himself across the room, running flat out, focus collapsing further with each footfall. Ten steps across the room, going this fast and high. Puffs of breath rise gray from behind the van’s open doors and they should be invisible in the morning mist but Sam can see the way they change the current of the droplets in the air, stark as exclamation points. He can see when they disappear in preparation for a shot and that, on the move, is where he aims. There are three bright red hits for his four shots and then he hits the far wall and slides down. Two more, he thinks—is all he can think—and he coils to run again. 

“Shut _up_ ,” the Soldier shouts, voice tight enough to crack. It jolts Sam, shakes him into identifying the tone as panic. Which is important. Things other than hitting the targets are important. If Steve is getting through to Barnes—

Steve stumbles into view, backwards, as if he’s been shoved. Sam matches up the sound of the shot to what he’s seeing when Steve drops to one knee and the Soldier fires again. The Soldier smiles, small and satisfied. Sam can see blood and it’s coming from Steve’s gut. His chest closes cold around his heart but he can’t help. What he can do is go through with the plan. “Hey,” he says, and when the Soldier looks his way he drops his pistol. “We surrender.” 

The Soldier’s face blanks out. Experimentally, he aims his Skorpion at Natasha. She kicks her Glock away without taking her hands from Fury’s chest. The Soldier stares at her for a long moment, then snaps something in Russian. Sam assumes it’s meant for her until the fire from outside ceases, leaving the air singing with the abrupt silence. Fog blows in the broken windows before dissipating on the warmth inside. 

Steve lists forward, one hand on his abdomen. “Bucky,” he says. “You’re my friend.” There’s blood on his lips. It could be from a cut. It could be from deeper inside him. 

“You’re my mission,” the Soldier says. 

“If that were true, you would’ve finished it.” The remains of the door splinter to the ground behind him as the remains of STRIKE storms in. Sam is distantly disappointed to see none of the red was Rumlow. He glances at his gun. The plan could fail, totally, right here and now, but despite the milling and yelling, despite handcuffs the size of museum-quality cannonballs for him and Steve, despite the lack of concern for gunshot wounds and broken wrists, no one starts shooting yet. “Not here,” Rumlow snaps when someone aims at Steve, and glances out the shattered windows at the neighboring houses. 

Fury might still make it. Steve might. 

The Soldier stands motionless, staring through Steve, until Rumlow claps and gestures at Sam. “Don’t you two have somewhere to be?” 

The Soldier blinks and stalks over. His metal hand locks around Sam’s bicep. It’s gentle, which isn’t comforting. “He wants to see you,” he says. 

“Great,” says Sam. His lips are numb. He doesn’t look at Steve. “I’d like a word with him, too.”


	3. Chapter 3

Last he knew, Sam could hold his breath without losing consciousness for twelve minutes and four seconds. Last he knew, he’d been timed by Zola and a tech who closed the lid of the tank without looking away from the monitors displaying Sam’s vitals. He can’t remember whether it was training or pure experimentation. He hasn’t double-checked his time lately. 

This feels like being back in the tank. The distortions of sight and sound; the increasing, unbearable pressure; the trick he played on himself to hold out. _You’re just below the surface_ , he told himself. _Hold still so they can’t see you and they’ll pass by. As soon as they’re gone you can breathe._

He pulls away beneath the surface of his skin and freezes there, leaves his eyes vacant and hopes he can stay down, stay still, for long enough. Sooner or later he has to inhale and they’ll see him. Every so often a tech with a mole under his right eye will look over and say something that flattens everything in Sam’s head which at least makes it easier for a few seconds, but it’s not working the way Rumlow’s trigger did. It wears off faster and leaves Sam shaking. 

The Winter Soldier, at least, isn’t about to see anything. His left hand is locked around Sam’s arm, so solid it disguises Sam’s shaking, but his stare goes twenty miles through the tile wall. The lab beneath the bank hums with activity, techs and machinery, but the walls bounce sound back like the room’s empty. 

Hopefully the Soldier’s stare goes right through them back to Steve. Hopefully his programming’s been shaken up enough for the plan to work. 

Sam ricochets off the thought of Steve and back to the lab. _Like I needed another reason to hate banks_ , he thinks, can’t afford to think, he needs to think about the plan. In pieces. 

The barred door opens and techs scatter like swatted midges. None of them have tried to touch Sam yet. Judging by the Soldier’s reaction when one got halfway through unbuckling his vest, if one tries, Sam has some leeway in how far he lets them get. Sam wonders if he can get away with breaking someone’s arm and have the reaction be largely of exasperation. 

The scattering has put the techs out of the way of the old white man coming in, surrounded by some variation of a SWAT team. They have SHIELD insignia on their shoulders but there are no familiar faces, and some of the pressure eases off Sam’s chest. If Rumlow and the rest are still busy with Steve and Natasha, then Steve and Natasha aren’t dead. 

He can’t lose that pressure. It’s keeping him under. 

Sam’s never seen even a picture of Alexander Pierce, but any doubts about this man’s identity disappear when the Winter Soldier straightens, attention back on the room. “Here,” he says under his breath, like he’s giving Sam a present. Another coil loosens in Sam’s chest. They’re not waiting for Zola this time. Just Pierce. He’s sorry for Barnes, but Pierce isn’t in Sam’s nightmares. 

Yet. If he makes it through this…. 

Pierce walks over to the Winter Soldier and puts a hand on his shoulder, fatherly. “Good work,” he says. He scans Sam a limb at a time, like he’s already in pieces on an operating table. “You’ve recovered an invaluable asset to Hydra. Admittedly you lost a chunk of Zola’s brain in the process.” He shakes his head, disappointed but fond. The Soldier’s hand tightens on Sam’s arm. Pierce sighs. Then he says, “Well, we don’t need him anymore. Together, you two will help us set the world on the right course. And just in time.” He looks into Sam’s eyes, finally. Sam stays still, counts buttons on lab coats, doesn’t look back. Pierce pats the Soldier's shoulder and smiles. “As a reward, you can leave for this next part if you want.”

Sam doesn’t look over, can’t afford to see. The Soldier doesn’t move. 

Pierce shrugs. “On your own head be it,” he says jovially. He waves a hand at the techs. “Gentlemen, if you’d check the programming on the Falcon. It’s a hassle, keeping your grip on something that flies.” He hasn’t looked away from Sam. “We wouldn’t want you getting misplaced again.” He puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, now. “I’m very sorry you were lost,” he says. “What a waste of your time and effort, pretending to be normal for years.” He is perfectly earnest. Sam doesn’t think Pierce believes a word coming out of his own mouth, but the conviction in his voice drags like an undertow. “We’ll put you to rights,” Pierce says. “And you can get back to doing what you were made to do. Helping people. Protecting them. Just like your friend here.” He taps the Soldier’s hand and it drops off Sam like a dead weight. A tech with brown hair and glasses pulls Sam gingerly away and Sam stays still inside. He goes where he’s directed. The tech never looks at his face. He slices Sam’s shirt off without seeing more than cotton and scissors, and then a canvas for electrodes and lead wires. 

Pierce taps his lip. “You can take the cuffs off him.” He beckons to the Soldier. “Since you’ve elected to stay,” he says, “I’d like you to hold him down.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

“It’s a pity. I would have liked a demonstration.” Pressure on his shoulder and gone. Lead shoots across his back in ripples that gain momentum rather than lose it, rebounding off skin and spine and colliding with every nerve along the way. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” 

He opens his eyes. (Eleven people. Five techs. The Soldier. The politician. Four foot soldiers. A door of bars. The politician is walking away.) The Soldier. The politician. (His cheek is numb against the table. His hands are numb above his head. His wrists feel swollen and rotten. He can use them if he has to. He’s unrestrained.) He can move. 

He hauls himself to his hands and knees on the table. The pain flattens itself against him from above. 

“Take it easy, now,” calls the politician. “You’ve got a long day ahead of you yet.” (The door closes and locks behind him. He speaks to someone outside and his tone is less friendly. He uses the words “escape” and “hill” as he disappears.) The politician is gone. 

He doesn’t remember. (There is a plan and he doesn’t remember it. A common problem with the chair. _“No piece of equipment is perfect,”_ he remembers someone sighing. _Escape_ is important. _Hill_ is important.) He sits heavily on the table and the weight on his back changes direction. The pack is heavy and his center of gravity is off. He will remember the plan. They only used the chair once. It can’t be gone yet. “Steve,” he says. “Natasha.” 

The Soldier is abruptly standing in front of him and has a hand over his mouth. “Don’t,” he says. A tech looks their way and he slams a fist onto the table, denting it. The tech flinches. 

Escape is important. Hill is important. Steve and Natasha and the Soldier—

A piece of the plan comes back. He only needs one piece at a time. “We have to go,” he says into the hand. He knocks it aside and says it again. 

The Soldier says, “Where?” 

“Hey.” This tech is far across the room. “You heard Secretary Pierce. You can stay with him as long as you help. Don’t mess with the programming.” His gaze is on the Soldier’s arm as he talks. He makes a note on a chart. 

“He’s not even programmed,” the Soldier says absently. “Just wiped.” 

“Which makes him especially vulnerable. Don’t mess him up before we even put him together.” 

The Soldier’s hands drop from the table. 

The politician is gone. Steve is—

“You know him,” he says. 

The Soldier leans back in, a hand on either side of him, one knee bent. (This is how Steve stood when—he can’t remember.) “Shut up,” the Soldier hisses so no one else can hear. No one else has hearing like theirs. “Do you need to go back in the chair? They’ll put you back in.” 

“So stop them.” Steve and Natasha. Escape. Hill. The politician came here and left. The foot soldiers had SHIELD on their shoulders. “He’s in danger.” 

The Soldier’s brow furrows. “The Secretary?” 

“We have to go.” 

The Soldier’s eyes dart to the techs and to the men with guns. His head is lowered, hair hanging over his face. No one else can see where he looks. No one else would meet his gaze now that the politician is gone. 

“Steve is there.” This is the plan. The politician will be there. Steve will be there. He will bring the Soldier. The Soldier will come because no one else on his side talks to him like a person. The Falcon remembers how that feels. He remembers how grateful he was for Zola’s monologues all through the night. 

The Soldier shivers. He rocks forward and back. 

“They don’t know. They won’t believe me. But we need to be there.” (Four guns pointed at them. Five techs, access to defensive measures unknown. Barred door. The pain in his back. The hum beneath of it sensation, of awareness, of parts he’s been missing. The Soldier’s not in pain.) He can fly. He just needs the Soldier. He says, “He’s in trouble. I can get us there in time. If you can get us out.” The _if_ is heavy. He means it to be. 

The Soldier stills. His lips pull back. “Can I,” he says. 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

(He has wings. He shouldn’t use them yet. The pack hasn’t set into his back. Flesh tears with every change in direction, in altitude. It’s worth it. _Escape_ is important.) He has wings. They’ve escaped. The Soldier doesn’t know that it was an escape. He thinks they’re going back when they’ve completed their mission. This isn’t to plan but is an acceptable deviation. 

It would be easier if he could use the grips on his wings, to help the straps offset the weight and for ease of steering. Instead his hands are locked in the sides of the Soldier’s vest and he’s carrying well over twice the weight he would be if he let go. He can’t think for the pain. This is an acceptable deviation as well since he doesn’t need to think. He doesn’t know the way to the Triskelion from the bank if he thinks. He climbed until he could see the river and feel the curve of the earth from north to south and he turned in the direction his gut told him to. (This is an expression. It’s inaccurate. It feels more like listening to his skin, to an electric impulse that beckons along his pores in the direction he needs to go.)

He settles high enough that the drag of the wind is less. The draft beneath him is cold but firm enough to lean into. The Soldier’s breaths are shallow but he’ll survive. 

(He spots the Triskelion and thinks he’d prefer not to land. The last time he landed he didn’t fly again for years. If he lands they can take him back. There will be water and the chair.) He spots the Triskelion. He plunges toward it. The updraft tries to take his wings from him. He circles the building in one great arc. He ticks off rooms ten at a time from the top down. (Men and women in black and white and blue at computers, at filing cabinets, at screens, at desks. Red hair, black hair, white hair, hats. He needs this combination: Blond in blue, redhead in black, redhead in suit, bald man in black.) Everything else blurs but they stand out when he finds them. Blond in blue, redhead in black, redhead in suit, bald man in black. “Get rid of the window,” he tells the Soldier over the wind, and banks left. His back tears. 

The Soldier lifts an arm as if through mud and finally fires. 

He banks right again, folds the wings, and dives for the weakened window. The Soldier kicks out at the last second and the glass shatters. Chunks of glass pelt them anyway. 

(He remembers fear. There was broken glass and he was afraid that Steve would be hurt. Not by the glass but—by the Soldier. That doesn’t fit the plan. He’s supposed to get the Soldier back to Steve. This is supposed to happen.) 

He opens the wings to catch them and his back tears again. The wings take up half the room but one of them is spread over the Soldier. The Soldier has rolled onto his side and is gasping. His lips are blue. The Falcon leaves the wings extended. 

He’s not sure which one is Steve. He does know what comes next. The politician was in the bank. He gave the orders. Steve needs to know this. He says, “He’s Hydra. SHIELD is Hydra.” 

The bald man in the trench coat has a phone to his ear. His mouth slackens and he looks wounded for just a second. He looks at the redhead and the blond. “Do it,” says the blond. The redhead nods. 

“Nick,” says the politician. (He sounds hurt. He sounds worried. He’s lying.) He’s lying. “This young man is hurt and confused. You can’t seriously think—” 

“Do it,” the man in the trench coat tells the phone. “You got this, Cap?” he says to the blond, and he leaves the office without waiting for an answer. 

“Nick,” the politician repeats, and he takes a step to follow. 

“Hey,” says the Captain. He has a gun pointed at the politician but he’s looking at—at the Soldiers. “Don’t. You should stand trial for this, but if I have to shoot you I will.” (He’s sitting down. He’s very pale. He’s dirty and sweating. His shirt is clean except for the blood leaking through the stomach.) “Sam, are you okay?” 

He shakes. The name fits. The name is important. It’s not relevant to the plan but it’s—

“Relax, boys,” says the redhead. She’s sitting at the desk and typing. (He knows her. Lots of people are sitting at desks and typing in this building but he doesn’t know them. They’re not important. She is.) He knows her. She sounds like she’s far away. “Steve, I can shoot Pierce if he tries anything. It doesn’t take me long to pick up a gun, I promise. Sam, I helped you before and I can do it again. I just need you to keep Barnes calm for a little longer.” 

(Natasha. The Captain is Steve so she is Natasha. They’re why he’s doing this. Them, and something else, too big to try to remember all at once. He is to retrieve the Winter Soldier. He is to tell them how deep this goes. He is to contain the Winter Soldier.) He is to contain the Winter Soldier. 

The Soldier has gotten to his knees but no further. He’s looking between Steve and the politician. Steve looks back and his expression hurts to see. The politician looks back like he’s never seen the Soldier before. This won’t last. Once he understands the plan he’ll stop pretending and he’ll give the Soldier an order. Then the Soldier will need to be contained. The Falcon’s back is raw and his legs are water. His fingers are unresponsive. 

“It’s okay, Buck,” says Steve, and then, “Sam? Please talk to me. Just say something.” 

Sam. Sam. Sam can’t think of anything to say. 

“What on earth do you think you’re going to find?” says the politician to Natasha. “You must know you don’t have long before security at large catches wind of this, and I hate to say it, but neither of these two men look terribly likely to be convincing in a court of law.” 

“I don’t need to find a thing, Secretary Pierce,” says Natasha. She doesn’t look away from her typing. “I’ll leave that to the public.” 

Pierce hesitates. Natasha smiles. Pierce turns back to Steve. “This is an act of treason,” he says, and he sounds sad. He sounds the way he did when—he’d said something to Sam. _“I’m truly sorry we lost you.”_ When he apologized for losing him Sam had known he was wrong in a way worse than lying. “She has Nick fooled, but I have trouble believing you’re willing to subject the American people to this, Captain Rogers. They’ll lose their premier intelligence agency and their only defense against the supernormal threats that mount every day… because a Russian spy who only switched sides in the last decade thinks that’s the wisest course of action.” 

Steve catches Sam’s eyes and smiles with only some of his face. “Natasha has good judgment,” he says. 

“You’re bleeding pretty heavily,” says Pierce. “You’re not thinking clearly. You need medical attention.” 

“Thanks for your concern,” says Steve. “I’ve never made a big decision while bleeding before.” 

Pierce turns back to Natasha. “It won’t be just SHIELD’s secrets you’re spilling. Are you sure you’re ready for the world to see you as you really are?” 

Natasha stops typing. She looks up. She doesn’t seem far away anymore. She’s right there. She might even be scared. But she says, “I already did it.” 

Pierce’s face drags and slackens. “You need two alpha level members—” 

“I didn’t tell you? We have company.” She holds her phone up to face them and it buzzes before it connects. There’s video. 

_Maria Hill_. (That’s why the word is important. Sam can see more of the plan at once now.) Hill is standing in a cool blue room that looks like it’s somewhere in this same building. “It worked?” she says. 

“It did. Ooh, look.” Natasha taps the computer. “It’s trending. Thanks, Nick. Director Carter.” 

“Don’t mention it.” A woman with white hair and an English accent takes the phone. “I’m happy to be a help. Anyway, now I can say I founded and outlasted an entire intelligence agency. Perhaps I’ll have them put that on my birthday cake, instead of candles.” She sees Steve and her expression falters. “Darling, are you all right?” 

“Nothing a few stitches won’t fix, Peg.” Steve waves with the hand not holding a gun. “Sorry to get you up for this.” He looks at her and his face is soft and clear but then his eyes dart again to the Soldiers. “I should probably get going, though. There are a couple more things I need to take care of. Agent Hill—”

“Not anymore,” says Hill. “At least I’ll be able to print my résumé right off the internet. I’ll get her out safe, Captain.” 

“And I’ll be right back up,” says Fury heavily. 

Natasha hangs up quickly. She makes it just before Pierce says to the Soldier, “You heard what these people just did. I need you to kill them before they do any more damage.” 

The Soldier rises as if yanked to his feet. His gaze skitters off Steve and onto Natasha. 

“Bucky, don’t,” says Steve, and stands. He makes a wet sound and falls to one knee. Blood spreads across his shirt. 

“I got it,” says Sam. To Steve. To the Soldier. (He knows what they told the Soldier about him because he remembers what Zola told him about the Soldier. _It hurts at first but soon you won’t be alone._ Of course the Soldier listens to him. If they’d played their cards right, he would have listened to the Soldier, just the way they wanted.) Sam retracts the wings. He walks toward Natasha. Her face sets and she coils. 

“Sam, you’re going to regret this,” she says. (He remembers fighting her, suddenly, remembers how fast and sure she is and that it hurt. He remembers feeling it was worth it and isn’t sure why.)

Still. He doubts he’ll regret this. When he’s close enough, he turns aside. He takes Pierce’s head in his hands and twists. His left wrist pulses with pain but the bone has set and grown back together. His fingers don’t do much of what he tells them to but they remember to close as if what’s between them isn’t there. 

It takes a few tries for him to drop the body. He has to work his fingers open, through shards that claw and cling. 

Natasha doesn’t attack him. Steve doesn’t attack him. Steve is going to lose consciousness soon. 

He turns to the Soldier next. “We’re done,” he says. 

“No,” says the Soldier, and pulls out a knife. He looks at it like he’s not sure what to do with it, and then his face clears. “No prisoners.” 

“Bucky,” says Steve. He sounds like all the blood is gone from him already. 

Natasha fires. At the same time, Sam dives. 

The bullet knocks the knife loose and metal fingers screech as the force of it snaps them back. Sam hits him at the same time, and it gives him an opening. They hit the floor together and Sam has time to pin his arms to his sides with hands and knees both. “It’s okay,” he says. He can see all of the plan from here. “This is what was supposed to happen.” 

The Soldier’s face pulls and twists. He drops his head to the side so he can see Steve but turns back just as quickly. 

“We know him.” Sam thinks the Soldier could get free if he tried. He thinks there are more things he should say. He can’t remember them. He looks over at Steve too and Steve’s eyes are closed. He looks like the Soldier did when they arrived, blue-lipped and barely breathing. “He needs help.” 

Nick comes in with his gun out. He doesn’t look much better off than Steve. There’s blood on his shoulder and when he sees Pierce’s body he looks young and then he looks very, very old. 

Natasha gestures and Nick lowers the gun. Sam says, “We can’t help him if you’re fighting or running.” He lets go of the Soldier’s arms. “I went with you. Your turn.” He tilts his head at Steve. “He wants to see you.” 

The Soldier knocks him off and Sam curls to avoid the pain in his back. He waits. The Soldier says, “All right.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

“How’s the beach?”

Sam laughs and sits up, despite Steve’s mumble of protest from behind him. He cradles his phone closer and scans the beachgrass and tidal pools on the off-chance of human presence before answering. “It’s awful. Cold, windy. Got sand in my hair, in my bed. No view with all the fog. That close to what you want to hear?” 

“I only want the truth,” Natasha says piously. 

He scoops sand onto the edge of the sheet they’re using in place of a towel out of consideration for the width of Steve’s shoulders. “I tell you about the sun and the sparkling sea and you still haven’t visited. I thought I’d take another tack.” 

“Sam Wilson, don’t use boating terminology on me.”

“I can’t help it. I sail now. I’m a sailor. It just slips out.”

“Falling off a sunfish every time the wind dies down isn’t sailing.” 

“Just because you can probably sail a yacht single-handed you have to look down your nose at us who got a late start. Not everyone can be James Bond.”

“That’s true.” Something rustles on her end of the phone. It sounds like papers being shuffled, but Sam has given up trying to guess what’s going on when she calls. He doesn’t have a clue how she manages it, but she contrives to allow only the most misleading sounds filter down the line. “Be fair, though, I need you ordinary folk. Where else would I find my Bond Boys?” 

“Oh, man. Now you have to take us on a cruise, on a yacht, around the world in eighty days. I swear to wear a speedo the whole trip and get Steve to do the same if you’ll wear a captain’s hat.” Steve makes another sleepy but contrary noise. Sam twists to look over his shoulder at him. “Natasha is wearing a captain’s hat,” he reports. “You owe me this.” 

“What does a yacht captain’s hat even look like?” Steve says in something shy of a whine, and crosses his arms over his face. The sunlight, fading to orange, does some incredible favors to his biceps. 

In Sam’s other ear Natasha laughs and says, “Done. It’ll be nice to outrank him on the high seas.” She huffs and the phone scratches against something. “We really will come visit soon. Just a few more tracks to cover. It’d be awkward if we blew your hideout and I had to buy you a whole new house on the beach. I’ve never been a landlord before. Hey, maybe that would be fun.” 

“I’ll have you know I’m a stellar tenant. You’d be lucky to have me. Anyway, we’re plenty rested. Anybody follows you, we’ll deal.” 

“That’s fair.” Another rustle. “James says hi.” 

“Hi back. He want to talk to Steve?”

“ _I_ want to talk to Steve. He can go after me.” Then, more distantly, “All _right_.” Back at the mouthpiece she announces, “James wants to talk to you. I still get Steve first.”

“Noted.” Sam beckons. She can probably hear his hand moving or some shit. “Let me at ’im.” 

“Take care.” 

There’s a brief rushing and a thud. Sam honestly can’t tell whether they’ve traded off the phone. “James?”

“Dia dhuit.”

Sam winces. Gaelic means he has to reply in… Hungarian? “Szia,” he tries, and dodges when Steve rolls over and gropes for the phone. He pins Steve’s hand between his arm and his ribs and pauses in search of a topic. What James wants out of these conversations seems mostly to be confirmation that Sam is alive and himself enough to remember the code. Other than that, his strongest feelings are about what he won’t discuss, which inconveniently includes anything he thinks is an identifier of Steve and Sam’s location. They’re not hermits, and Steve is pretty recognizable, so they’re low-profile but not top secret. But James isn’t going to be the one who gives them away to the wrong person. Sam can understand that. “Tell me something. How do you feel about fish fry?” 

“Neutral, unless I caught the fish.”

Sam laughs. “We’ll work that into our dinner plans when you guys get out here. Friday night fish fry unless you don’t catch anything.”

“How’s your back?” 

Sam hesitates. This is a deviation. Probably a positive one, but still. “Fine. I heal well, you know. Nothing I haven’t bounced back from before.” His left wrist aches on cold days where James broke it, but he’s sure as hell not bringing that up. “Since we’re talking about it, how’s your shoulder?” 

The face he pulls is practically audible. “Fine. Put Steve on.” 

“Hey,” says Natasha, tinny in the background. Sam releases Steve’s hand and tosses him the phone as he stands, leaving them to fight it out. They’re in the lee of a dune, invisible from three directions. Not that it matters much now. The sun’s sinking and there’s a chill coming off the water, besides which their house is set on a marshy stretch of beach with only a few pockets of sand. There’s no one around. 

“Be right back,” he tells Steve, who looks piteous and shivers theatrically. “Put a shirt on, then,” Sam laughs, and leaves Steve to it. 

Getting the wings removed for the second time had been the same blurred, anesthetized nightmare that it had the first, with the added fun of what felt at the time like déjà vu. Just like the first go around, Natasha had stood between him and any medical comers until he’d been pronounced deprogrammed and of sound mind enough to consent to the procedure even if it was a foregone conclusion. He couldn’t live much of a life with a jet pack and giant metal wings surgically grafted to his back. He catches himself sometimes waiting to feel the wings like he did before, prodding at the places in his head where he was aware of them like he’s waiting for a sleeping limb to wake up. But he’s traded them for a job at a VA center near enough to his house on the beach, Steve’s rotation of volunteer work, and a Stark Tech model that doesn’t depend on neural interfacing or wires snaking under his skin. 

He gets Steve. And he still gets to fly. 

The sky above the sea is 88 feet every second. It’s eleven breaths and 95 heartbeats per minute. It’s the thrust of wind beneath him, unreliable in specifics but faithful in that it’s always there if he searches hard enough. It’s the way the wind and water thunder so far around him he can hear their directions all the way down to his bones. Most of all it’s the rush of looking down and seeing exactly what he feels, currents in the air echoed in gradations of blue and gray and green, in glassy foam and spongy weed and jagged trash, in the slant of the waves and the distance between them. 

It’s also cold as hell, especially with the sun setting; and Sam can see fine in twilight but his night vision isn’t anything to write home about. 

He hits the beach at a run and crashes into Steve, who catches him and manages to stay upright with a yelp of protest. “Sam, Christ, you’re freezing.” 

“And you still don’t have a shirt on. That is what I call a shocking lack of preparedness.” 

“I didn’t want to miss the show.” Steve kisses him. 

Sam leans into the warm thrill of it but starts dragging Steve toward the house. Wearing a million-dollar piece of equipment on the beach takes a toll on spontaneity. “You know,” he says when he breaks away next to fumble with the door, “you’re allowed to bring a shirt to the beach. It’s a thing people have been known to do.” 

“What would the point of having a mostly-private beach be? Anyway, apparently I have to compete with Natasha in a captain’s hat.” 

“Aw, you know you’re the only captain around here.” 

“I bet you say that to all the military officials you make fall in love with you.” 

“You’ve got me there. It’s my go-to line.” He hangs the million-dollar piece of equipment on the wall with hitches Steve up beside it. Steve hooks his legs around Sam’s hips, putting his chest level with the pack. Sam has but will never admit to the thought that here, side by side, are the Stark dynasty’s greatest engineering feats, and he multitasks by latching onto the crook of Steve’s neck before his expression can give him away. 

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Steve says. “For fixing the door.” His pupils are blown, he’s breathing in hitches, but he’s still going to pull this shit. “Sure was nice to just turn the knob, walk in, close it behind you and have it latch, huh?”

“ _Oh my god_ ,” says Sam, “if you don’t shut up about that damn door.” 

“Well, if you hadn’t broken it….”

“I followed the WikiHow directions very carefully! You’re incredible. Fine. Thank you, _again_. Now shut up and let me repay you.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Afterward, Steve lies with his head on Sam’s stomach and Sam cards curved fingers through Steve’s hair. His knuckles ache, low and distant. There’s the irregular slosh of waves and the frenetic strain of crickets, the slide of Steve’s hair and the warm rush of his breath. He can ignore the ache. 

There’s an especially gusty and prolonged rush and Sam laughs, jouncing Steve’s head. “Was that a _sigh_? Are you _sighing_? That had better be a sigh of sheer contentment or I am kicking you out of this bed.” 

“Try it.” Steve rolls onto his stomach and locks an arm around Sam’s legs. He crosses the other arm over Sam’s waist and rests his chin on it. “I was thinking about what you said to Natasha—about how if someone followed them here we’d deal with it. We’re lucky we haven’t had to do that yet. I got recognized again today.”

“Who by, one of your bingo buddies?” 

Steve pokes him between the ribs. “No. Another kid at the art program. She was… eleven?” 

“So between eight and thirteen, go on.” 

“Really elaborate cornrows.” He reaches up and traces a labyrinthine pattern on the side of Sam’s head in illustration. “I don’t know. She was nice about it, and she didn’t take a picture even though she had a phone. Actually, a guy at the senior center—I was playing checkers with him, not bingo—told me I looked an awful lot like Captain America and then said it was quite a coincidence when he heard my name was Steve Rogers.”

Sam laughs until Steve is forced to forfeit his position. He wiggles up beside Sam and nestles his head under Sam’s chin instead. “Okay,” Sam manages, “but where is this going, because I don’t see what it has to do with like… a die-hard Hydra fanatic following James and Natasha to our fair city and raining destruction down on your coincidentally Captain America-esque head.” 

“I don’t have to volunteer at the same VA where you work. If I stop now, maybe by the time something happens…. People don’t know who you are, Sam. If something went down, you wouldn’t necessarily have to pick up and leave. Necessarily.” 

Sam hits Steve in the back of the head with a pillow. He feels this merits a pillow to the face, but he’d hit himself in the neck. Steve’s strategy is solid. “It’s too late and I’m too comfortable for your martyr complex, Rogers.” 

“Right, but remember what you said when we met?” Steve slides closer, arms wrapping around Sam’s waist. “About how you need to stay still. There hasn’t been a lot of that since we met.” 

“You’re gonna make me say something really sappy, aren’t you. If you’re recording this for Natasha, I swear I will make your life hell.” He buries his nose in Steve’s sweat-damp hair. “I’m not actually good at staying that still. I’d rather do it than get lost, but it was a survival tactic. A little room to move and knowing I can circle back home, that’s more my speed.” 

Steve’s lips part against Sam’s collarbone. Finally he says, “You sure?” 

“Well, you’re sitting pretty still on my account.” Sam runs a palm down Steve’s back, the sturdy line of his vertebrae. “It’s a tough compromise, but we can make it.” 

“It’s not really on _your_ account. All that running was more of a survival thing for me, too.” Steve tilts his head back and painful earnestness gives way to a mischievous grin. “Plus I’ve put so much work into the house now….” 

This time Sam gets him in the face with the pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt, from [taloness](http://taloness.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr: 
> 
> "AU where Sam was the Winter Soldier but defected the organization (any of your choosing) that created him. He works for SHIELD and provides them critical information in exchange he has a life of his own (works at VA) and they keep his past hidden. That is until the day he meets Steve and falls in love with him. Later the organization later resurfaces and Sam's new life collides with his old one. Sam is forced to become Winter Soldier in order to save Steve. But Steve, who loves him too, unravels everything (thanks to Nick or Natasha) manages to prevent Sam from giving up his humanity. They save the day and both get off the grid to properly live their life together."


End file.
